Do Not Want
by CampionSayn
Summary: Two years. Two years of being divorced (if not on paper, than in spirit) from a monster and still, there is the unsure feeling of ever hooking up again. Well, she has her health and she has a life, of course, but it's not the same. At least, not now that she has kids to deal with. The sequel to Hating This; hinted Creeper/Harley.
1. Title

Title: Do Not Want  
Summary: Two years. Two years of being divorced (if not on paper, than in spirit) from a monster and still, there is the unsure feeling of ever hooking up again. Well, she has her health and she has a life, of course, but it's not the same. The sequel to Hating This; hinted Creeper/Harley.  
Warning: I haven't decided if this is to stand on its own or if it is to continue yet. I'll have to wait and see. Also, this is only in Batman TAS because there is no section for general DC Animated and it didn't feel right just to drop it in the comic section where it would rot.  
Disclaimer: I don't own the franchise and therefore make no money off of this.  
Dedication: Let's see… **Hebi R**, **Herotales**, **angelvan105**, **RMMB, Kirra kills**; basically anyone who gave a damn about the last fic. And this is also my second in a string of anti-cyber bullying fics.

* * *

_-:-  
Life is a game, play it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it.  
-Mother Theresa._

* * *

She didn't like to be touched anymore.

That is not to say that she rejects touch altogether—not at all—but it has to be initiated by her own hand or not in the least.

There are certain times, of course, where someone might inadvertently brush up against her (_an elbow in her side while out drinking cocktails because Leland thinks it's good to celebrate a good day at work in a more friendly environment—with karaoke and no smoking allowed—than a suspicious place down by the docks or near Crime Alley where it was considered lucky if the pint glasses were clean; a hand on the shoulder that turns out to be Selina or Bruce Wayne that spotted her across the duck pond in Robinson Park and they just had to say hello; a prod of a sneakered toe against her ankle when her downstairs neighbor—Jason Todd—passes her on the stairwell to ask her if she has any spare cigarettes or some change he could borrow_) and get away with it. But mostly, these occasions are still met with annoyed looks are derision and sneering.

Creeper found that, still, if he was to pursue Dr. Harley Quinzel, it would have to be entirely without making any move that could be deemed unsafe on her own person. She'd tossed him over her shoulder that one time he'd snuck up on her outside her apartment and landed a light peck on her cheek, after all. Those flowers he was to give her had been ruined, to boot.

As Jack Ryder, he had to satisfy his curiosity of her by setting up situations where he could just appear next to her in a bar on her days off, or in the Laundromat she occasionally went to when the laundry machines in her apartment building were out of commission; he'd just sit or stand next to her with his own drink or his own laundry and talk to her without making her annoyed in some way.

_("I don't hate him, you know," she confided in Creeper one night when she had almost gotten mugged and he had swooped down to help her out; an unnecessary thing, seeing as she just lifted her leg and kicked the thief in the stomach so hard Creeper and Jack—both personalities in their own ways—could tell she had broken a few of the man's ribs._

_This had become a sort of go-between of the two of them. He asked her questions until she told him to fuck off and then when he saw her again in his big feathered boa and his speedo, it was with the answers he had asked._

_He looked at her with his half-crazed, half-sane eyes—such a giant step up from Joker himself—and made a sound for her to continue. Jack liked for her to delve into the details of her life while Creeper just liked to hear her talk (**it was better than hearing a mermaid sing, Creeper crooned to Jack when the reporter was in control**) and talk._

_She continued to walk the back alleys while he stooped and capered beside or above or behind her; dainty hands with the chipped fingernails stuffed in her black coat's pockets, "You and Bats and the rest always seem to be under the impression that I hate Joker now, but I don't. He doesn't hate me either."_

_"Kinda hard to believe when you and he always try and kill each other these days, beautiful," Creeper smirked, his hands tightening on the edge of the roof he was bounding on above her like a squirrel after it's seen another squirrel that doesn't belong; his anger wasn't palpable, exactly, but it showed in how his fingers and tendons made his gloves crunch against stone._

_She shrugged as she turned into another alley that that he knew would lead to that refrigerated building where she would say hello to detective Renee Montoya's little brother, tease the young man for a little while with how scary he still thought she was, and then buy some weird meat products for her hyenas and herself; and he knew she would pay extra. It was a force of habit Jack believed she had developed out of guilt while Creeper just thought it was her way of apologizing for making Benny Montoya sweat in her presence._

_"We do want to kill each other, but not out of hate. More like…if we don't try and win one over each other, we'll stop being able to function and have a breakdown. Jack's too vain to be able to deal with that, and more than one massive breakdown a decade is too much for me to handle. So when he escapes and tries to screw with me, we fight. Plain and simple.")_

* * *

There was blood all over the hallway Joan had been stuck in with Joker for the better part of five agonizingly terrifying moments and walking down it again on her way to meet Commissioner Gordon and that new detective in the MCU (Anna…Ramstein? Ramone? Ramirez?) to take her statement of how Joker had gotten out this time was not something she wanted to be doing. Stepping over some spatters of blood while her hands were tucked in her whitecoat to prevent anyone from seeing how she was shaking made her feel more queasy than she already was.

The two police individuals stood at the end of the hall looking a bit too calm for her liking, but she greeted the white haired Gordon with a nod and just lightly looked over the young Latina female detective that, up close, did appear to be showing a bit too much of the whites of her eyes. Ramirez didn't want to be there and Joan knew that Gordon had brought her because these situations happened all the time and the woman detective would need to get used to it sooner rather than later. Like trying to get used to taking care of feral dogs that, even though they had been collared and vaccinated, still always managed to piss on a wall inside the house or claw their way out from under a fence and into the freedom of the city.

"Commissioner Gordon, Detective Ramirez, it's good that you got here so quickly."

"Not as fast as we would have liked," Gordon muttered to Joan lowly, eyeing his new detective as Joan starting leading them down the halls with blood caking them and towards the room at the front of the asylum that was kept to house all the camera monitors. They needed to have the footage of Joker getting out and the sound footage incase he'd said anything, while cornering Joan and after being confronted by Harley, that could tell them what his next move might be once he got into Gotham City instead of the suburb of Summerset that Arkham sat upon (_basically the same place, but Summerset was a district full of half natural plants and didn't suffer from as much pollution, what with being on a hill just overlooking the ocean_) in its own dreariness and misery.

"It's basically straight forward in the way he got out," Joan explained as they made the way down the halls, her hands shaking just a little less as the adrenaline in her veins was thinning out and the tips of her fingers touched at the spare change in her pockets (_three pennies, all disgustingly dark with age and sweat stains from human fingers; one quarter that was less than a year old and still clean, which was a miracle in Gotham and a couple of Canadian coins she never seemed to remember to get rid of_) to make herself calm down further—not looking at the blood again, "He somehow got someone to smuggle in the metal holder of a pen and he used it to pick the lock to his sell like he did six months ago."

"I'm guessing he swallowed it in his lunch?" Gordon asked, hand steering Ramirez away from the wall so she didn't brush against the concrete that was cracked from a weight smashing against it and blooming outward.

"Of course," Joan nodded, punching in her personal number across the digits of the access panel to the camera room, fingernail making the keys tap hard like bird beaks snapping against glass, "And we're having reconstruction on the floor he ambushed me in, so he got his hands on one of the power tools that the workers neglected to lock up on their way to their three hour lunch. You'll want to speak with them."

They all entered the room, one of the screens showcasing the hall of the most infamous patients as they whispered to each other about the hour's earlier events (_the Riddler was close to his newest parole hearing and was being quiet, but looked like his face would turn purple if Ivy spoke another ill word about the power equipment and the tussle Joker had with his ex-wife trying to defend Leland from going through some agonizing surgery_,) with a few screens recording the lunch room, the shower room, the grounds outside the asylum.

The one Joan looked away from and that Gordon glared at while Ramirez looked sick to her stomach showed the recording of the events just before Joker broke out of a window and left Joan and Harley in the hallway with one of them clutching the right side of her face and her right shoulder. Blood smears on the floor made the three nickel plated, two inch long nails scattered about look like shards of glass in a '50s noir film.

* * *

"Personally, I think you could pull off the one-eyed pirate look."

There was very little emotion Jack Ryder could feel around Jason Todd except for discomfort and astonishment. The kid couldn't be older than eighteen and he smoked like chimney, swore like a sailor, and wore clothes around his apartment (hell, around the _**apartment building**_) only because Harley and their neighbor Stephanie Brown yelled at him to do so each morning. And yet, he was more comfortable around Harley-saying whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and didn't care if he made anyone else uncomfortable when he was in her apartment in nothing but his boxers and a Japanese see-through kimono (_he wore it like rock and roll royalty and Creeper chirped friendly remarks about whenever they saw each other from the apartment windows_)—than anyone than maybe Creeper and Batman had the right to be.

Especially when she was cutting open a frozen deer carcass in her living room, nothing on her but grey Hipster panty-shorts and a black sports bra and (_Jack felt sorry about it and Creeper just kept making jokes about depth perception_) thick white gauze taped over her right shoulder, her collarbone and fore side of her face just above her teeth. Doctor Thompkins had taped up her face as best she could, but head wounds caused by two nails in Harley's cheekbone, one just in the crook of her eye near the bridge of her nose and two more just above her eyebrows were absolutely certain to bleed for a good long time.

Jack had chosen to sit in between Harley's hyenas, because the entire apartment had the windows open and the heat was turned off in the middle of dead winter to cool down the fever she had gotten from a slight infection along her shoulder from one of the nails that had been pulled out and been discovered to be covered in mold, and he couldn't have been happier to have made that choice as the glare Harley directed at Jason seemed to drop the temperature further to well below zero.

Jason didn't even flinch and the goosebumps along his shown skin didn't multiply.

"I can also pull off looking like the villain in 'Hellraiser,' but we both know how uncomfortable that was to look at while I was in the hospital, Mister Todd," Harley snarked calmly, leveling her meat hatchet from the kitchen into the shoulder of the deer hanging from the ceiling; the dead animal's tongue a strawberry red and touching the floor as if it were still breathing and trying to taste fresh bark in a maple forest.


	2. Touch of Grey

Sorry this didn't come out in time for X-Mas. I would have liked to upload it, but I had to work on the jingle bell day so… whatever. Also, I would like to mention to whoever reads this that, yes, this is just like Hating This in that it is connected from chapter to chapter in some ways, but the timeline will alter from one day to the next. And Dustin Nguyen inspired this chapter with his Li'l Gotham series with the discovery—again—that any plot is possible.

* * *

_-:-  
I know a cat named Easter who said,  
"Will you ever learn? It's just an empty cage if you kill the bird."  
-Crucify, by Tori Amos._

* * *

**Touch of Grey**-:-

"You're not serious. You can't be serious."

"I'm dead serious. You don't want Eddie to ever come back here and I want a new coffee machine. Everybody gets what they want if this works."

"Except Jeremiah, of course. What does he say about this?"

"That's the beauty. He _doesn't_. He'll be in Metropolis telling Strikers Island's mental ward that it would be a poor choice to let any of their cases over here and I'll have already filled out the paperwork for the new machine. By the time he gets back, Eddie will be gone and the nice and shiny new machine will be stationed in the lounge like a newborn baby."

"How come I don't believe you?"

* * *

"Why are we standing in the freezing cold behind a bullet proof glass type shelter the police would use when they aren't sure if they can turn off a bomb?"

Joan continued her shivering in her thin white doctor's coat that didn't even _attempt_ to block out the freezing degrees of winter wind sweeping around her and Edward Nigma as they, indeed, stood behind a bomb shelter (_there was no way she could understand why it was called such a thing when it was basically constructed like a professional soccer ball net that a goalie—or for that matter, a bomb specialist—looked into instead of blocked_) in the back of Arkham Asylum.

In front of them by about twenty feet, was a red X spray painted in the inch of snow that had fallen the night before; the lining of it a little squiggly from the wind and moisture of the melted coloring, but still an undeniable X.

"Harley wanted to see you off with some sort of surprise," Joan chattered, teeth clacking and fingers tugging on the dark blue yarn scarf Harley had given her before heading off to prepare the intended surprise for the graduate of Arkham's system. She tried to sound amiable and cheerful, but even she could hear how fake that sounded against the wind whistling and…

Footsteps and muttering?

"…And I realize that our grounds look less than keen on the eyes, but it is winter time and as soon as the spring thaw comes—Doctor Leland?"

Joan scrunched her face inward and tried not to scream like she would if she had a sofa throw-pillow to stuff over her face before she wiped her pretty features of such unbridled, unfortunate emotions and turned her head from looking at Eddie or the red X to find not only Doctor Jeremiah Arkham heading over towards them, but Bruce Wayne (_looking charming in his probably awesomely heated black winter coat and white scarf around his neck, but frowning a little at the surrounding area_) and—since things couldn't get any BETTER from where Joan was standing with Eddie—Lex Luthor with his chauffer/body guard/probably hate lay Mercy Graves. All of them seemed to be wearing the normal reaction to seeing Joan and Eddie doing something so strange behind a mental institute.

Well, maybe not Jeremiah. He looked sick to his stomach and a little like he could probably guess what was happening as he actually sprinted the rest of the way over to Joan and Eddie and did the proper thing by not standing IN FRONT of the bomb shelter. The others got the hint and followed at basically the same pace.

"What is this, Joan?" Jeremiah questioned, directly to the point and absently glancing from Eddie to the red X to his guests and then back to Joan who tried to imagine turning into a puddle of water that would freeze like a clear sheet of glass and turn back to normal in the spring like some fairy over in Russia or the actually freezing cold Greenland, "Mr. Nigma was supposed to be discharged an hour ago. Why is he still here?"

Joan glared at the obvious way Jeremiah spoke of Eddie as if he wasn't even there, and when she opened her mouth to scold him (_scold her boss—what a wonderful thing she never would have done before Harley had come back to practicing at Arkham and they had become sort-of friends again_) when she found Luthor speaking; his cold eyes, that Joan had never liked when she saw his press conferences on international news stations, looking over Eddie like he was some sort of rare bird or an overly large horse he could see in the circus, "Nigma being released, Jeremiah, really? I would have assumed that after his last break out you would have kept him in longer than a year."

Eddie's shoulders ruffled at the precise stitching that allowed his irritation to show directly at the billionaire. The grey suit that Joan had given him as a mental asylum graduate accentuated his meager figure in the best way possible, but started ruffling at the edges when his internal self caused strain on his muscles—the muscles along his arms and down to his fingers tightening like he would actually hit the tan, pompous ass. He was aware, however, that while mentally they were near equals (much to his chagrin,) emotionally and in terms of outright vanity of the self, and, of course, physiologically, they were a little squicked in comparison.

He didn't rise to the bait.

Rather, he looked up at the roof of Arkham where, from his perspective, someone was wheeling out a large square to the edge of the where the roof ended and cold air began and he kept his mouth shut as Bruce Wayne (_will wonders never cease at what fate will throw at a person on any given day_) opened his mouth. Eddie quietly made sure that he and Joan were completely inside the shelter and there was no way that the large square would squish them.

"Now, now, Lex, let's keep in mind that Mister Nigma has had a slightly more experimental doctor for the last year and he hasn't made even an attempt to leave the grounds without permission," the blue eyed brunette smiled at the Metropolis mogul (_there was ice running through him as he did it, but appearances had to be kept in the daylight hours and—as much as Dick and Tim joked about it—a fake smile wasn't going to break his pretty complexion_) while trying to show Eddie his (moderate) support by stepping closer by a foot or so and giving the ginger a little nod, "And anyway, his last incident outside these walls wasn't as dangerous as it could have been. It only really endangered Batman and, if you believe in what you hear from the Daily Planet or the Gotham Gazette, it was just another… Uh, what's tha—"

Everyone looked curiously at what Bruce was pointing at in the snow, which had been dropped off of the roof before he finished his sentence.

A large balloon-like thing had landed directly on the red X in the snow and made a little 'plop' sound on impact. It jiggled once, almost giving off the sound a person might hear when they jumped on a waterbed, but didn't do anything else. It was about the same size of a professional grade basketball, but looked like it had been dipped in a painter's vat full of nasty blue-grey water.

Joan tried not to flinch when everyone but she and Doctor Arkham himself looked up at the now much larger shadow of the square Eddie had spotted. All of them also didn't bother to cover their ears when a voice yelled down at them (probably through a bullhorn) with a suspiciously gleeful drawl, "LOOK OUT BELLOW!"

* * *

Exactly two pictures had been taken of Eddie when he had left Arkham, two months previous.

One had him in a nice, almost fashionable, Victorian pose outside of the gates of Arkham; his back to the camera while wearing the gift of a green bowler hat and holding the black gentleman's walking stick he had received from Harley that were meant to compliment Joan's gift of the jacket Eddie had started to wear almost every day to the new office he had bought a week after his release. The picture showed him looking up at the gates and waving goodbye in an almost David Bowie fashion that his new secretary loved to death. The print of the photo was colored a lovely bright black, white and grey, except for the hat, which had been treated digitally to show the green.

He kept that particular photo above the door to his office so that people/clients-sent-to-him-on-recommendation could only see it on their way out. It was meant to instill confidence in him, he supposed. Mister Wayne had suggested it was a good promotional tool, but Eddie himself didn't see it.

The other picture was something Eddie himself could really enjoy because it was, in his _occasionally_ humble opinion, something that was, in a way, very beautiful without being too complicated. He had it in two sizes; one was for his wallet for when he was feeling down on himself or like he was slipping back into insanity and he just had to open up his leather money holder and look at it so that he felt a whole lot better (_like a lizard crawling out of a cave and into glossy morning light when it was dead tired of eating insects that thrived on nothing but bat droppings and piss and wanted something like a grasshopper or a ladybug_) in a minute or two. The other size was just big enough for a framed picture that could sit up on his desk so that he could see it and could just flip it face down if anybody came in to talk to him.

In that picture was him standing in the background as little more than a fuzzy backdrop figure looking quite amused at the main figure in the frame.

Harley, much to Joan and Doctor Arkham's severe agitation and panic, had dropped the coffee maker from the staff lounge that never, ever worked for more than three days at a time off of the asylum roof with the help of her students (_or ducklings as the blonde liked to call them when they followed her around the asylum taking notes and listened to the way she barked at them instructions and theories and how their paperwork on certain patients they were treating sucked so very hard)_ and a workman's dolly cart. The machine had landed atop the round sphere planted in the snow that had, apparently, been filled with confetti and glitter in all the colors of green Eddie could really remember.

The shelter Eddie and the doctors and the other guests had been behind came in quite handy as the machine hit the ground and smashed in all directions, exploding pieces of plastic buttons that requested mocha or French vanilla or Irish cream and springs and water tubes and whatever else made up worthless coffee machines that had been forced to commit suicide like so many devices bought from Acme by Wile E. Coyote. The confetti and glitter had burst like a cloud from under the machine and decorated the metal carcass and the snow with ease.

The only thing of the coffee machine that hadn't been infinitely destroyed was the very top that had been held stationary with duct tape. It was held stationary, because Harley had gone through the trouble of pounding a little goodbye note into the metal—possibly with a rock or a hammer—that made Eddie laugh his ass off behind the bomb shelter while Luthor dismissed any possible venture he'd had about assisting in funding the asylum and dragged Mercy off with him to their car; while Wayne quietly chuckled in equal measure to Eddie's laughter; while Joan tried to stop Doctor Arkham from suspending or just firing Harley only after he'd taken the elevator up to the roof and possibly thrown her off the building much in the way she had done to the coffee machine.

_{Don't fuck up, Eddie.  
Don't be no one's bitch.  
Don't let anyone give you shit about your new hat.  
See you around.  
-Harley.}_

Weeks later and the former Riddler still couldn't decide whether or not the message was meant to be a warning, a threat, or an actual attempt to wish him luck.

Perhaps this was an achievement in the highest degree for anyone in trying to outsmart Edward, but somehow he really didn't mind that since it was Harley and she had never really lorded anything over him. Ever.

He snapped out of his thoughts when his office phone rang and, seeing as his secretary was out to lunch, he picked it up himself and answered in the usual way he had gotten used to after the first fifty times he'd said the words.

"Hello, Nigma Private Investigations, how may we be of service to you?"


	3. His Girl Friday

Soooo… I just read all over tumblr about that challenge DC posted about people getting a job if they could draw Harley in a bathtub, naked, committing suicide. Aside from the whole suicide part, I would actually consider the _other_ stuff. So, here we get.

* * *

_-:-  
Being an adult? Fuck this shit! Being an adult sucks! Call me egotistic, but I want to __enjoy__ my life!  
-hyenafactory._

* * *

**His Girl Friday**-:-

_"Stop it."_

_Joan continued to brace her chin on the ball of her hand, the busted fan of the doctor's lounge still spinning at an accelerated speed when it was snowing outside and everyone on staff had their white (or in Harley's case—high octane black) coats still on and every single button done tight to preserve their body heat; the tips of her hair swaying back and forth and her pearl necklace white teeth showing as she grinned across the table at her friend. Friend in her words, mind; Harley still refused to call her that back._

_"I'm not doing anything," Joan practically sing-songed, emphasizing this statement by not flinching when Harley finished the paperwork she was on __**(petitions Ivy had started posting twenty-four hours ago when Joker got shoved back into his cell and all of the papers said that she very much wanted to speak with Harley as soon as possible) **and slammed the folder holding it all with a snap that made Becky Albright over in the corner of the room trying to reach the twizzlers in the top shelf cupboard, jump._

_Dainty, cracked fingernail hands went onto her next load of papers that Becky had handed her twenty minutes previously on her opinions on Jervis now that he was actually talking to her in therapy without Harley coming in to check on him and make him stop quoting the Alice books, "Yes, you are, __**Jane**."_

_Joan twitched, just barely, at the hated nickname (__**well, less hated than being called 'Dominatrix' when she was on long distance calls to her parents, but still disliked during work hours when Joan couldn't just walk away until Harley was willing to listen to her**) but the smile didn't drop, "No, I'm not."_

_One blue eye passed judgment on Joan as the other one was still fitted with gauze since the stitches had torn and the risk of infection rose the less they were protected, but the emotion behind the half-glare came through like light passing and contorting colors beyond cathedral glass and Joan at least had the decency to avert her eyes when her grin wouldn't vacate the immediate vicinity._

_Darker pigmented eyes settled on the clock above the revolving doors that had replaced the old one when it finally croaked._

_A green painted figure of Tinkerbelle, from her seat on the curled metal of the big hand in the clock that was basically a very detailed metal crocodile set in a circle, biting its own tail, clicked further towards the smaller hand where it sat on the number three. The small hand glinted in the figure of a golden hook, but was so much less threatening than the J. M. Barrie book ever made it out to be._

_"Hmm, only two hours and seventeen minutes until work day's done. Would you like to go with me to a movie or—oh, wait, you already have plans, right?"_

_It was petty and it was immature, but when Harley's pen broke in her grip two seconds later and bled royal blue ink across all of the fingers gripping the crippled shell of the writing instrument, Joan couldn't bring herself to care._

_Becky cared from her corner when Harley opened her mouth, however, and made as hasty an escape as she could with her cane and the hard gotten twizzlers in hand._

* * *

**_(Two days earlier…)_**

Stephanie had deep blue eyes that reflected the same colors of new denim pants before a teenage girl went out and got grass stains all over them while fooling around with her boyfriend (or girlfriend) and their equal amounts of saliva. Jason had green eyes that could remind Jack (or Creeper, depending on if the yellow alter was in a more attentive mood) on occasion of how Harley had once described to him a Norse God in another universe she had been to who was quite a delight to talk to and made hell on earth for his brother with a hammer.

Harley seemed to level out the color between them depending on her health, her happiness and how much new medication she was on for the multitudes of bullshit mob goons, street thugs, or super villains put her through every month.

At that moment, Jason sitting on her couch smoking (_she had snapped and snarled and chomped her teeth like her hyenas that slept at Stephanie's feet, but eventually gave up on making the emancipated minor put the white stick out when Creeper had hurled himself at her window and opened it from the outside—letting the smoke out_) and Stephanie helping Harley re-apply the bandages that clotted the open holes along her face that would be there until Dr. Thompkins removed the stitches and applied better ointment, Harley's eyes were the clearest blue Creeper had ever seen.

And when he meant clear, he meant the kind of clear that Japanese water merchants looked for out in the rim of the Arctic Circle before finding the bluest iceberg that they could, hauling it back to their tiny island and then drilling cylinders out of the ice to melt and then sell at ungodly prices.

Fine by him. It meant she wasn't on pain meds and she was highly lucid.

And _annoyed_, but the yellow wacky man couldn't be bothered by the way Stephanie made a real effort not to flinch when he crawled further in through the window, wiggling like a caught worm through the small space, and then dropped to the floor in a heap with Harley's lips pursed disapprovingly and Bud glaring harder at him than Lou ever did.

Her look was thrown to the wind by Creeper considering she was in the bathtub (_she had bought it off a retail vender she used to rent a room from back in the old days,)_ that she kept in her storage unit downstairs until more injuries to herself surmounted and she was forced to place it in the center of her living area and the only thing saving her modesty as she sat inside was the bloody (_so much blood from so many torn stitches, reopened scabby wounds and knife or gunshot marks; the red turned the white tub pink more often than not_) ice she sat in to help her heal. Jack wondered if in recent days she had taken up therapy for Mister Freeze, but Creeper carried on; capering over to sit atop the back of her sofa, grinning down as Stephanie continued applying sticky bandages to the wounds on Harley's face until only one eye was directed at Creeper.

"What do you want now?" Harley sighed, leaning back into the tub's solid marble when Stephanie let go of her face and moved onwards to the cuts along her left wrist that were compliments of jumping fences outside of the Gotham docks and oozing droplets onto the ice hanging along the edge of the tub and making pieces stick together.

Stephanie absently noted that she was almost out of gauze for the cuts and leaned over towards where Bud was lying down. Her hand slid under his tail _(it was pleasing to the big lug, seeing as the way the grain of his fur tilted and the way she pushed her skin against it left delightful tremors in its wake) _and caught the handle of the second first aid kit under the sofa that was really extra heavier than the one she was using because it came fully stocked with sterile needles and the drugs that gave Harley just a tiny little bitty-bit of relief when Jason or Leslie Thompkins or Stephanie or—hell—even a few of Batman's sidekicks helped out when Harley was having a particularly bad day and happened to drop by before she bled to death. The blonde carefully pulled the metal box out into the open and started unwrapping a new roll of gauze and popped the cap of the peroxide since the one she had been using was down to just two or three more rounds.

All this while Creeper continued to smile and Jason lightly strummed the guitar he had a tendency lately to leave in Harley's apartment so when inspiration hit him then he could catch Harley and bounce ideas off or her (and echo them around her walls).

"I have a bit of a theoretical question and challenge for you, sweet lady," Creeper finally stated, changing positions so he perched on the back of the sofa like a very large and garish owl, arms behind his back and everything.

"Oh, God."

"Ah, ah, before you interrupt me, I promise you it'll be worth your while."

"I sincerely doubt that, but whatever."

Forging onward despite Harley basically ignoring him in favor of playing with some of the bloody ice cubes, Creeper grinned wider and shuffled to the furthest arm of the couch and hung almost all the way over and nearly into the tub. Harley reached out towards the other end of the small space she was in and brushed the ice further towards her chest which stayed covered with her sports bra if only because she didn't really feel comfortable being completely naked in her own home with just-this-side-of-illegal minors always popping in and out of her door (_this included, but wasn't limited to, Jason, Stephanie their friends that popped over when they weren't fixing electrical outlets under the city or being harassed by homophobic gang members that knew better than to EVER step foot near Harley's apartment's alley, Robin-now-Red-Robin, annoying-bratty-new-Robin-that-hadn't-hit-puberty-yet and Klarion the Witchboy that once and a while fell in and out of the place to visit Stephanie_) and windows.

"Suppose that I could make you laugh or smile while simultaneously doing you a huge favor. Would that get me a date with you?"

Stephanie put the gauze and medical kit back under the sofa and grabbed Jason's guitar to make the noise stop so she could hear where this conversation went. Not a thing made her day better recently (_not since Harley had introduced her to Batman and he had helped Stephanie find good adoptive parents for Steph's baby girl when the blonde realized that she just wasn't mature enough to take care of a baby and Harley took it upon herself to be a better person than Stephanie's own mother; Steph's days were actually pretty good without any help since then_) except watching Creeper set up train wrecks in hopes to get Harley's attention. It was better than the circus.

"You're acting like this would be something easy to do, what with my winning personality," Harley replied, eyebrows twitching upwards when Creeper just kept looking like he had a winning lottery ticket.

"Well, would you?"

"Would this end up getting me a one-way ticket back to jail or the loony-bin?"

From the inside of Creeper, Jack stated that her suspicions were a valid point, but Creeper was just fighting not to cry at the smoldering blue eyes trying to burn a hole through his head while maintaining his charm.

"No, no, no, no," Creeper promised, arms tucking outwards to rest on the tub's edge, making Harley back up further on her end, using her knees to hide behind, "I just want your assurance that if I make you laugh like these big boys here," he motioned towards Bud and patted Lou on the head, "or smile like the Cheshire-Puss your friend the tea lover mimics so much, that I get you for one evening on the town that will include food and a really, really good time."

Some of the ice cubes slid around in the tub like slushy being stirred in a mini-mart and Jason stage whispered, "Say yes!"

Stephanie flicked his ear.

"…Fffffff—fine."

"Shake on it?"

The Creeper's gloved hand almost touched Harley's nose with his giddy, wiggling fingers and when Harley gripped it hard enough to snap bones, he actually went lax, hoping she would pull him in so he could fall into the tub and, by default, onto her. She wasn't haven't that, though and pushed his arm back into his shoulder socket so he lost balance and fell off the couch. His rear hit the hardwood and he made a girly shriek that was torn betwixt delight and confusion.

While he was behind the couch, the whole of him hidden, he raised his arm like an emperor declaring ownership of a new country and said, "But first you need your bathrobe. The favor is parked at the front of the building. Unless you'd be more comfortable without it…"

"Give me a minute."

* * *

**_(Two hours later…)_**

The sounds of bells making a jingle that was forever leading children in the direction of the noise with the promise of sweetness during the summer months were still going on as Detective Bullock and Detective Montoya had only managed to find the switch that turned off the revolving mechanism for the human-sized ice cream cone hooked onto the top of the ice cream truck that had been stolen from a Gotham food chain earlier that morning, but Commissioner Gordon wasn't complaining.

The Creeper had pranced off after switching on the Bat signal, but not before taunting the Joker for about fifteen minutes while he spun in circles until the Dark Knight arrived; the red mouthed madman had been yelling obscenities when Gordon and his detectives had laughed their asses off at the sight of him tied spread eagled to the spinning cone. Being that he was stripped down to his purple boxers and had been driven to the police house only after Creeper had gotten what he wanted an hour earlier, that was almost understandable.

Jim wasn't going to feel sorry for Joker at the moment, or ever really, but he did feel a little sorry for Batman as he was the one untying Joker from his position in the freezing cold. Or, well, taking a small, handheld blowtorch to the metal bands Creeper had used his strength on to hold the white clown in place while Joker screamed at Batman about sending Creeper to find him and how Batman was getting lazy and a whole lot of other crap that could only make sense to Joker.

"…I have'ta say, though, that it's great to see Harley's taste in men hasn't changed."

The Commissioner pretended not to notice when that particular comment from Joker landed him a grazing flesh wound from the small blowtorch. His scream from the heat and charring of his skin was unpleasant, but it was no skin off of Batman's hide and Jim wasn't going to comment when that direction of conversation was pronounced dead on impact.


End file.
